But if this origin of the "Whitehalls" does not satisfy, there is another which may be even more likely. They were, possibly, at one time the sites of village Witan-halls, where the wise men of the Saxon villages assembled their local Parliaments, the "witans" or "witenagemots," those remote forerunners of the village- and parish-councils which statesmen of the late nineteenth century have established, as items in a more or less admirable scheme for restoring the Heptarchy. There are "Whitehalls" in the immediate outlying fields of Sittingbourne, and there is one within the Roman encampment overhanging the railway cutting at Harbledown; but at none of these places are there any traces of buildings above ground. Excavation might reveal ancient foundations. XXVIII [Sidenote: HERMITS] As mediaeval travellers approached Sittingbourne from the direction of London, the first objects they perceived were the chapel and hermitage of Schamel, dedicated to Saint Thomas a Becket, and standing on the south side of the road. They are gone now, and a wayside public-house--"The Volunteers"--stands on, or near their site; but the hermitage was, from the time of King John to the impious days of Henry the Eighth, a resting-place for those devout pilgrims who sought the shrine of the "holy blissful martyr" at Canterbury. In the reign, however, of that "Defender of the Faith"--when it suited him--the chapel and the hermitage were scattered to the winds, and the hermit thrust out into a world that had grown tired of making pilgrimages. But, while it lasted, the Hermitage of Schamel did a very thriving business; so thriving, indeed, as to excite the jealousy of the Sittingbourne people, who conceived themselves injured by the intercepting of pilgrims before they could reach and fertilize the town with streams of gold. Rich pilgrims were a source of wealth to many towns and villages on the Dover Road, and hermits, bishops, priors, and abbots contended for them like 'busmen for passengers before the introduction of the bell-punch and the ticket system.